Book 2 Prologue: Everly's world.

Anyway, just to avoid any arguments later on, side stories will always be set during THE REIGN. Just like the prologue. THE REIGN is a great time to be alive if you happened to pick the right side, know your place in life, and willingly bent the knee to your local self-declared God Empress. If not, well, here's a little slice of life adventure detailing the day-to-day existence of being fodder by design. Don't read the last sentence if you don't want to know who Everly's high council will be.

Enjoy!

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Years from now...

I was seven years old and didn't know anything else but the Katharos. Or the inheritors as they preferred to be called. Ever since I'd been born, they'd always been there. To me, they were a universal constant, as inevitable as sunset and the receding of the tides. I accepted their existence. What other choice was there? I couldn't deny the reality of sickness or death. I couldn't deny violence and the shame I felt when I had to endure it. I couldn't deny the world as it was, and so I couldn't deny the Katharos either. They simply were.

My dad did, though. It was hard for him. He'd been some sort of fighter when he was younger. Part of something called the military, which was like a snatching crew, but bigger. Bigger than anything I could imagine. Bigger than a town. Maybe bigger than a city? And they didn't answer to anyone except someone who was 'lected. Is that the word? I think so. Someone got 'lected every four years on the old calendar, and everyone paid tribute to him. He was called the Unprecedented, and the military was his fist. I think.

My dad's crew were called the rapid militia. And he said they were the bravest of the brave. He said if anyone acted unlawfully, that was when he and his guys got the call. "Something gets fucked up, we went in and unfucked it," he said proudly. I didn't know what that meant, but I knew my dad was strong. No one in the resettlement messed with him. He was a respected man, feared even, and I loved him. But he did not love his life. He was there when the Katharos first came through the portal they opened from Oldstead. They tore a hole in the air itself and came marching in like they owned the place. Which they did, I guess. My dad and his crew were strong, but the Katharos say there are limits to what mortal men can do.

They tell us that all the time.

And occasionally, they'd show us. Just like they showed him.

He never told me how he lost his hand. Only that it happened fast. The ugly scars he received when his rifle burst in his face. That happens when a sword slashes through a chambered bullet so quickly that it detonates the gunpowder. The Katharos didn't like guns. For them, killing was something you did face-to-face. They understood the tactical necessity of ranged weaponry in war, but they only let their conscripts handle such things. It was a mortal insult to them to imply they couldn't do their own work up close and personal.

The Katharos poured through the portal and quickly took the city, led by Grail himself. The militia did their best, but they were swept aside like they were nothing. It was those Aegis guards the Katharos wore. They looked like silver medallions, pinned to their shoulders. A quick tap on them put up something called a variable dispersal field. It blocked stuff. Stopped bullets cold, deflected light, protected them from heat and flame. Stopped magic cold.

The only way to get through the field was with slower, cruder methods. They could still be suffocated or slowly crushed. They could be stabbed and slashed. You just had to be willing to fight them on their level. Which was still no guarantee you'd survive, because these things—I'm sorry, I'm sorry, the Katharos, were not only a culture dedicated to melee perfection:

They could read our minds.

Try fighting someone who could anticipate your every movement, who could whisper to you everything you were afraid of, who within moments of crossing blades with you, understood you better than you understood yourself. It was impossible. Our best fighters were toys to them. First, their most experienced warriors came in the first wave and took our own veterans apart. And then, during the cleanup phase, they sent out their apprentices to practice on the remnants of our defenders.

They culled us like sheep. Maybe that's why they called us lambs.

My dad was no lamb. Even with twenty years spent under their boot, he didn't stop finding ways to fight them. To resist. He and others like him did their absolute best to be as uncooperative and unproductive as they could be. Kelthay was our home. No one had the right to come in and tell us where we could live and what we could think. To let us reproduce on a scheduled basis like pedigreed dogs, and to keep human children collared like pets. He said this was savagery, something we'd evolved past centuries ago. They didn't care. They let him fight. They loved that he kept fighting. They liked hurting him.

I don't know if it was a cultural thing or a genetic flaw, but the Katharos didn't process emotions the same way we did. Maybe it was due to them being telepaths? They couldn't feel emotions themselves, they felt it through others, and the sensation of it stimulated them. Love, anger, hate, these were intoxicants to those creatures. Especially the more negative feelings. The more intense the emotions produced by their victims, the greater their high was. Not only had we become a cheap source of labor, and entertainment to the freaks; we were their drugs. They drank our very souls. The worst of them indulged in depravity that couldn't be described and in a just world, would never be experienced.

Once every few weeks, they'd take my dad away. They'd haul him and the other non-compliants to the countess' estate and bring them before Claudia herself. The Empress's beloved sister. The smiling Princess.

Then they'd do things to their minds...

When they dropped him off, Dad wouldn't speak for days, and if anyone so much as touched him, they were risking their lives. They kept taking him over and over again, and he kept fighting back. Over time, he started to change. Forget things, forget my name, forget where he was. He was always scared, always angry. And it got worse and worse. All because he wouldn't back down. Between him and the Katharos, something had to give. And in the end, it was him.

One night, he had a nightmare. His screams wracked our entire dwelling, and practically made the windows shake. Mom tried to snap him out of it. Tried to wake him up. She shouldn't have done it.

She shouldn't have touched him.

I won't say what he did. But he did it fast, and my mom was gone. Just like that. I don't know if they loved each other. I don't know if they even really knew each other. They were paired together because the Katharos wanted them to be. They produced three children, who were inspected, approved, then taken away. Then they had me. Whatever it was my siblings had, I didn't. I was considered ancillary, so they let me stay home. My mom never talked to me, never even smiled at me. She was younger than my dad, born during the rising, raised and educated by them. Claimed she'd known the countess herself. That Claudia kept her as a pet, before she was replaced and tossed into the resettlement.

Mom never got over how far she'd fallen in life. Never got over her resentment towards my dad. Now she was dead, and I'd never truly know her.

Dad held her and screamed her name. He screamed even louder than when he'd been dreaming. That was when I realized he'd been well and truly broken. He'd snapped, and was just a shell of a man, lashing out on instinct. He was now useless to them. An overseer came in to investigate, irritated at being called from his bed. He saw Dad cradling my mother, took his bronze-colored helmet off, and laughed. Seeing an inheritor in person without their faces covered was always surreal. They were all so beautiful. Those strange hazel eyes, and golden white hair. It was only when they were in their armor that you feared them. When you saw their faces, it was hard to believe these angelic creatures could harm anyone at all.

They say demons once served the gods.

"Matthew, what have you done?" he asked my dad with a knowing smile. "She belonged to the Empress. As do you. Will you please come with me? Claudia will want to speak with you about your unruly behavior."

"Nooooo," said my dad. "No, no, no."

"Asking was a courtesy, Matthew. You will come with me."

My dad was on him in an instant. He let my mother go, raced to the overseer, and slammed him into the wall. He headbutted the creature, grabbed a knife off the tabletop, and then slashed it across his enemy's face. He then reversed his grip and plunged it toward the overseer's throat. But before it could penetrate his skin, the overseer grabbed Dad by the wrist, quick as a snake. My dad pushed with all the strength and leverage he could muster, but the overseer's grip wouldn't budge.

The overseer closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, then licked the blood trickling down from his cut face, sighing intensely with pleasure. Then with his other hand, he grabbed my dad by his throat, lifted him into the air, and brutally choke-slammed him to the kitchen floor. The air was knocked from my dad's lungs, leaving him sputtering for breath.

The overseer knelt, crossed his legs, and gently held my father's head in his lap, while stroking his hair like an old dog, murmuring gently, as he did so.

"Matthew…," he said, once more wearing that smile of endearment on his beautiful face. "Matthew. Thank you for sharing this with me." Then he slit Dad's throat with his own knife.

I've heard people talk about cutting throats like it was a means of killing someone instantly. That might be true for animals, but not for humans. It's messy, sure, but it's not actually a fast death at all. It's more of a slow suffocation. The blood doesn't just spout outside, it also goes down your esophagus and slowly fills your chest. You'll choke and drown in your own blood, and it takes a long time to happen. That's how my dad went out, all the while the Katharos that butchered him drank in his fear and desperation to live. Then it was done, and that was how I lost both of my parents.

The overseer shivered in pleasure and rose to his feet. "Everly's blessings upon you. It was a good night, after all," he said happily, rubbing a finger gently against his wounded face. "Very good, indeed."

That was when he saw me.

"Oh," he said. "I hadn't noticed you there, lamb. You must be Matthew's get. What's your name, girl?"

I couldn't say anything to him. I backed against the wall, shaking uncontrollably. He smiled and continued talking. "No name, then? Oh, that's right. I'd forgotten. You were the runout. The unremarkable remnant. There's nothing special about you at all, is there? Not like your wonderful siblings, yes?"

He gripped my chin and turned my head left and right, scrutinizing me. "No point in taking you to Claudia. I can already tell your mind is below her standards. I could dispose of you if you'd prefer. It's very difficult out in the world for a lamb that's lost its flock. Would you like that? Would you like to join your parents? I could do that for you if you'll only say please. Go ahead. Say, please kill me. Say it! Say it just like your father did…"

"He did not! He did not!" I sobbed.

"Yes, he did. He said it with his thoughts. He was happy when I finished him. Do you know why? Because he knew he'd never have to see you again…"

Fear left me in an instant. Hate replaced it, hate so potent and hot I could feel it burning me from the inside. Rage like I'd never felt before that I'd never known I could produce. It poured from my soul and hit his mind like a closed fist. This, he did not enjoy.

"Arrrgh!" he screamed, covering his face as though I'd thrown acid on it. I pushed past him, and raced to the door, leaving him rolling on the ground, shrieking in pain. Out into the dark I ran, just a kid with no one left in the world to look after me. Another lost lamb. I was going to have to get by on my own from now on. It wouldn't be easy. Terra was more of a nightmare than I ever knew. But through the degradation and the pain, through the desperation and fear, one thing kept me going. It was my hate. My hate was the greatest gift my parents had ever given me. It was my sword and my shield, and with that anger, I could hurt them.

And one day I'd do so much more than merely hurt them.

Whatever I had to do to survive, from that point on, I'd do it. Anything that made me stronger. More capable. Anything that let me match them. I'd never be a slave. I'd never again be one of their lambs. I would be so much more. After all, someone had to teach them how to feel on their own. Feel fear that is. And I would be that teacher.

I would be a lamb no longer. I'd become a butcher. And I'd make them all pay! All the monsters that were ruining this world!

General Grail. Tybalt the Rat. Conservator Laurel. Discordia. Countess Claudia.

And her.

Especially, her…

Empress Everly. The devil herself.

You'll all pay for what you've done.

One day, I'll have you all…